The Renaissance Man

Cheers! Suspected it, in doubt I went for the strongest one, best bang for the buck. I was close to vomiting only with the aftertaste of truffles, and if I opened my eyes during the first hour of effects or so. Next time I'll just grind them fine and drink them without chewing them, so I avoid that nasty acid aftertaste. @Nemra What happened?

@Something Funny Definitely. If for every one of Leo's videos you were to download the entire 3 hour video in full HD and paste it into Obsidian, then you'd possibly get to 100GB lol. My entire vault is 7GB right now, but there are 3 videos that alone are 4GB+. And I've been using Obsidian extensively for one year. I don't normally need videos for my notes, at most screenshots that take less than 1MB. At this pace I'd take me 15 years to fill in a 100GB drive, and a 4TB drive can be bought for $80 (probably less). So... no worries

@Something Funny Obsidian is all markdown, so basic text. I have 1000 notes (so it's likely the equivalent of 3000-5000 pages of a book with 500 words per page), and I'm pretty sure I'm under 10MB. Text takes zero storage. It's all about the images, but especially the vids. PS - Just checked, 6MB for 1000 notes, excluding videos and images.

@Something Funny Yeah Obsidian is awesome. Especially when you set up your plugins, shortcuts (I'm in love with all the shortcuts) and even the theme. I just use MOCs (Maps of Content) for organization, no tags, no folders. They're nothing fancy, basically instead of a folder you have a page with links to sub-pages. For example, I have a "Developmental Psychology" page, and inside it I have links to random notes I have, and sources. So a link to "Leo Gura", "Ken Wilber", "9 stages", etc. And inside "Leo Gura" I have a page for each video on the topic. This way I can always find everything. Then I can also use links normally within the page.

Please help if you have experience in self-inquiry and the ability to just be and laser-focus on the actuality, the essence of consciousness. ----- I learned about the difference between the experience of self-awareness vs being the awareness. That's different. The first is still a perception of the sensation of being self-aware, while the second is actually in tune with the Witness, the perceiver itself. Anyway... I noticed that to laser-focus on being, my most natural way is to basically look inward. To strongly de-focus my eyes to the point where it feels like I'm just being or "seeing" consciousness itself directly. If I don't do this, I continuously get lost into perceptions, and not being itself. Problem: this strains the fuck out of my eyes. After some minutes of this practice, even after stopping, my eyes automatically want to focus inward for hours. Only after a night of sleep this goes away. So until I sleep after this practice, focusing on stuff is tiring, and looking anywhere is disorienting, leaving even a slight sense of nausea for the entire day. Questions, help needed: Do you also deal with focus muscle strain afterwards? I haven't learned this internal gaze thing from anyone, but apparently it's not that uncommon. Is this the case for you? Am I onto something?

DeepSeek is currently the superior free AI (LLM). I have experience with Claude, ChatGPT and Google Gemini. Here's my evaluation, after trying to explore complex topics, and contemplate: Gemini: the worst for now, only use it for very simple tasks. It's just on an inferior level, less precise, less intelligent, and with a very, very short memory (1-2 messages last time I tried, so you can't really explore any topic). Claude: the free version just has too few prompts (like 8!). And it can't do internet searches. Plus, it's the only one that resisted giving me information on psilocybin truffles, so it has more barriers in that sense. ChatGPT: more prompts than claude, and about similar level of "intelligence". Can do online searches. The "reasoning" function is just a terrible attempt at replicating DeepSeek's "DeepThink" function, which is actually incredible. DeepSeek: doesn't have a strict free limit, but it's somewhere around ChatGPT, especially when there's not that much traffic on the website. The intelligence is slightly superior even to ChatGPT in my opinion. Can do online searches. But even more importantly, it's much less biased. This is huge. Hopefully it will stay like that. How Claude and ChatGPT are very biased and at times useless: A thing Claude and ChatGPT do is that after a couple exchanges, they push back on your theories and questions less and less, and lose any critical ground. For example, let's say I'm trying to understand theories of emotions, and try to point at apparent inconsistencies in current theories. At first, they push back on my objections, explaining in more detail the current landscape and understanding of the field. But eventually, after more exchanges (3-5, not that many), they start to forget about trying to actually understand the truth of the matter, and start to just build new models for you. Notice that. And those "new models" are just your own objections re-worded into a theory that confirms them. Unless you are proposing outlandish stuff, they will not push back at all, and it becomes a total echo chamber. Well, DeepSeek does not do that. Even after multiple complex exchanges, if the evidence is against your theories, it continues to push back in a really smart and unbiased way. It's actually delightful.

@Gonzo Durden Updates? In my experience sensory deprivation changed the fuck out of the trip. Like 0 to 100. Almost sober with eyes open, and after 5 minutes with eyes closed completely absorbed in my inner world, with an extremely still mind. And then I guess you could use that stillness to inquire on stuff. That's where you can extract 50x the juice, but it may require some extra skill, compared to being blasted into insights by the substance itself. At the same time I have only done 3 trips, so I'm a beginner. But the difference between just eyes open and closed, even if I was just still in my bed, was radical. Was feeling literally sober with eyes open. Sensory input just occupies all your awareness at "low doses". Can't speak for moderate or high doses as I've not tried.

@Aaron p It's more like directing my attention. I'm not trying to "see" being, but in trying to be it, I find it easier if I de-focus. It actually prevents me to see stuff if I do this.

@Yimpa The cow one's good! PS - I apparently answred to a post that's months old without noticing (the two headed calf)

I don't know, I feel like men who get into pick-up are almost completely there because they just can't get attract any women. And not because of a masculine ideal. Not saying there's no shame, actually, there's plenty of it, but I feel it rarely manifests as getting into pick-up as a common coping strategy. That's pretty specific, and pretty hard as well. If a man has no trouble getting women, he may be very insecure in general still, but I feel he won't get into pick-up. I feel the reason is much more direct instead: a solution for being sexually starved. That's ultimately why it has so much appeal and traction (it's still very very niche though). "Influencers" may mask talking about it as masculinity standards (possibly to justify it to themselves too), but most don't feel compelled to be masculine through pick-up. When thinking about masculinity that's not what comes to mind. What comes to mind is a much broader idea, of confidence, strength, leadership, money, women in general, not exclusively cold-approaching them. So I agree about what you said about masculinity standards that aren't challenged, leading to suppressing the feminine side and insecurity about the current self, but I disagree in it being the main driver for why people get into pick-up, by far. The main driver is, in my opinion, sheer sexual starvation.

@Ropuch7 I'll take a look at Grok 3

@OBEler truffles

TL;DR - Got a feeling that you can really do A TON of work with low dosages, and that I felt a culture of trying to up the dose ASAP, which may actually not be that productive for 99.9% of people, and that a better approach would be to milk low dosages and increase them over many months or even years, instead of weeks. And sincerely asking you guys what you think about this, I'm open to being 100% wrong. When listening to Leo, and even researching the psychonaut community, I got a feeling that the goal with a new substance is to go as high as possible, while also remaining safe. So you start low, but with the goal of ultimately increasing the dose ASAP to the max you can manage while remaining sane. Maybe that was a distortion of my interpretation, or maybe just a reflection of what looks like Leo's practice, not recognizing his goal is very specific and philosophical in nature. Anyway, after having a low-dose experience, I was really surprised by how much I was able to unpack. For a dose that with eyes open felt like being sober, and with eyes closed the effects were super subtle, I really got the feeling that you can really push it super far, a lot more than I thought. Both in terms of exploring consciousness and emotional processing. If we approach psychedelics as a tool that you're going to use for multiple years, possibly for the rest of your life, I feel like it makes the most sense to actually try to milk as much as possible from low doses over multiple trips, before ramping it up. And I feel like this can have a whole lot of benefits: Making the new state almost entirely understandable This can enable you to learn to work with it more masterfully, since you understand how it works Lower doses are less overwhelming and scary, if at all, and so they're pleasant and encourage further development You can still direct your focus (may require skill), and go into intense territory on your own terms instead of being forced into it You can more easily connect the experience to your sober consciousness, possibly allowing you to make huge progress in your sober practice, partially or even totally recreating some parts of the experience while sober And after you reach the limit with that dosage, you end up with a solid understanding over the substance, skill in directing your awareness and focus, and a series of positive and rewarding and non-scary experiences that you can more easily integrate in life. And from that experience and skill, you have all the tools to up the dose and truly make a lot of it while still keeping it pleasant, non-traumatizing, safe, and so on. I do think high doses can have their own place, but aside from 0.1% of people, most would probably benefit more from this gradual approach and mindset, and actually develop a terrific skillset for exploration with fewer resources, and can make their medium dose produce the same level of insight as another person's extreme dose. Then there's the 0.1% that may combine the two and go to the extreme, and you can still do that, but a lot more gradually. This is the feeling I've got, I'm not experienced enough to make recommendations, to be clear, I'm here to ASK YOU A QUESTION, because I really don't know. So I'm asking you beautiful people, What is your view and why?

I'd now re-title the post as "eye strain when trying to focus on Being", maybe this resonates with some of yall's experiences

Same, I experienced this with living with my family + going to the gym. Really can't be ignored.

@Basman I find you can use it for idea generation, even when contemplating, and then you evaluate yourself the validity of the ideas it gives you. You can make it challenge your perspective, help you answer questions... but always treating the ideas as if you had generated them, so you treat them as they are: ideas, not truths. May seem obvious, but sometimes when the ideas are not yours you forget. I don't know about therapy and mental health, I feel like serious change requires something beyond the conceptual, and you don't get it with AI. But sometimes change starts with an idea, and in that sense it can help. Can it replace a therapist? I have never been to a therapist, so keep that in mind. If I had to give an answer, I feel the effectiveness of a therapist goes beyond the knowledge they give you. The personal connection and the accountability may be the things that make the most difference. And AI can't give you that.

@Majed The trap is also in how you get SUCKED into certain environments without noticing their corruption. I now recognize the same principle in Leo's rant against the pickup community. And I see it in marketing, politics, etc. There's a pattern: You start by despising certain manipulating behaviors, as all of society does. Predatory marketing, manipulation and lying in your relationships, etc. You can't see how anybody that's not morally underdeveloped could ever say such things. But on the other hand you have such a strong need for money, or sex, or love, etc. So you take one of two paths: You never satisfy that need and somehow settle (most people) You go on a journey to solve that need once and for all, but you promise it will be the "ethical way". If you go and solve that need (path #2), what happens is that it's typically very, very hard to learn that kind of stuff. So what does hard mean? That a multi-month or even multi-year journey is required. All that time, diving deep into that bubble that is marketing, pick up, politics, sales, wall street, etc. in order to succeed. Time is a key component. It takes so long that it's enough time to forget, literally, about the way you viewed the field before you started. You're now totally immersed in it, manipulation slowly becomes the new normal. By the end of that journey, to succeed you had to learn so much, to change your behavior and worldview so much... You literally became a different person during that journey. It's hard to naturally view that world from the outside, because it becomes the new you. ESPECIALLY IF YOU GET GOOD AT IT. If you don't have a strong, conscious, intentional value system grounded outside of these activities, it's incredibly deceiving. Incredibly. Hard to describe to someone that's not been in it. My theory is that you literally forget about your old values in regards. It's as if your whole, complete system of reference shifts without you noticing. So it becomes super hard to even question the ethics of your actions, because when you're in there, the metric of judgment is not the same as before. It's now one that's highly corrupted. There's no uncorrupted system of reference left, unless you consciously look for it and maintain it. This shift in your actual system of reference makes the deception 2x as hard to spot!

@mmKay I use disposable ear plugs by 3M. They're cheap and incredible.

@Antor8188 Works especially well if you don't shower. Girls will jump on you.

@Jannes There are ways of making money that are not stressful. You can look for those proactively if you need to, while you grow and explore life. A remote job, an office job, etc. I get how even one hour a day can be taxing. Most haven't experienced it, but I have renounced good money in the past for stress reasons. The INFP picture is great if it serves as inspiration, but don't box yourself to that alone. Don't label yourself. Those categories are always rough trends. You make the rules. There are no rules. I always feel a great weight is taken off my shoulders when I remember this.

@Leo Gura You still haven't answered @Emerald's observation on why you hang out on the forum. That was a major point of hers. I actually get what you're saying in the blog post. Conceptually, but I get it. And I also get how you wanted to protect introverts from feeling guilty from having to socialize even if they're not cut for what society considers "normal". But there's a massive difference between totally being alone and a tiny bit of connection. Even if the scale goes from 0 to 100, the difference between 0 socialization and 1 socialization is massive. Think about it, even the man making the video you shared is making videos on YouTube! Maybe the "sharing wisdom" connection is deeper than normal socialization, and that's why he posts on YT and you post on the blog & forum. But it still fulfills the basic need of connection Emerald talks about. Am I onto something? If you stopped posting on the forum, not making videos, not posting on the blog, would you start feeling a crippling loneliness eventually?

Here's some amazing browser extensions I've found over the years. Behind The Overlay lets you close website overlays with one click (like cookie pop-ups, or other kinds of pop-ups, which often you CAN'T CLOSE unless you accept something or input your email). YouTube Summary AI with Gemini doesn't have limits (major pro), and it's pretty damn good. I use it all the time.

@Something Funny Cold Turkey for PC (everybody uses this one), and I use AppBlock on Android

Exactly, wild shit

@Something Funny Download an app blocker and block it until like 8-10PM when your productive day is over anyway. (strict mode, so you can't deactivate the block during block hours). Seriously, do this. You can always uninstall it if you don't like it. I've been using app blockers for a year, so I'm talking from experience.